Though it was the governor who acted unilaterally while resisting legislative efforts to help businesses, the Wolf administration crafted the ballot referendum’s wording as if the opposite were true. “The language is disingenuous. It is meant for it to be defeated,” Democratic state senator Lisa Boscola told The Morning Call. “The worst thing about it is it creates fear.” The challenge for supporters is to transcend the skewed language that the Wolf administration is attempting to coerce onto the voting public.
There is nothing unilateral about a majority vote of the people’s elected representatives. Assessing the severity and duration of an emergency, moreover, should not be the sole power of one person.
State senator Kim Ward, the GOP majority leader and the lead sponsor of the bill that placed the constitutional amendments before voters, describes the supreme court as “an extremely partisan” body that consistently does Wolf’s bidding. “They’re not going to look at the law and they’re just going to do whatever the governor wants,” she said. “The court created a constitutional crisis with this ruling, because now the governor is the only person who can end a state of emergency.”
Pennsylvania Governor’s Abuse of Emergency Powers Must End
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